Forget Fancy Equipment, Find Shallows To Find Bass

February 7, 1986|By Don Wilson of The Sentinel Staff

For the next few weeks, bass fishermen can forget their chart recorders, liquid-crystal graphs and other sophisticated gadgetry for finding fish on underwater structures. All these devices can be replaced with two words: think shallow.

Bass are spawning or preparing to spawn in most lakes, either building nests or guarding eggs already deposited on the shallow concave depressions in the bottom.

The key to successful fishing is looking for shallow water, 1 1/2 to 3 feet deep, with a firm (preferably sandy) bottom and plenty of reeds or other grassy cover.

Live shiners are the surest baits to provoke a nesting bass into striking, but with a little patience plastic worms can be cast repeatedly onto a nest until the fish takes the lure.

On Lake Tohopekaliga, the most renowned of Florida' big-bass lakes, long, 60-foot casts are the key to catching the spooky bedding fish.

Auburndale tournament regular Carroll Hagood proved the technique when he caught more than 65 pounds of large bass to win the Big Bassin' '86 tournament a few weeks ago.

Hagood spent as much as an hour trying to catch one large female fish, casting and recasting to her bed until the fish finally was aggravated into striking.

A less successful method, because it requires getting too close to the fish, is flipping. But many Toho regulars continue to catch fish with their 15-foot pendulum casts.

''Goblet's Cove and Overstreet's Landing are loaded with bedding fish, most of them in 18 inches to 3 feet of water,'' Big Toho Marina owner Robbie Robinson said. ''A lot of people are flipping with pig-and-jig pork rind and skirted jig combinations or lizards.''

On East Lake Tohopekaliga, the fish are concentrated around the dense grassy cover behind the reeds that rim the lake.

Although East Lake Toho's clear water usually hampers attempts to sneak up on bedding fish, this year nature has dealt anglers the upper hand.

''The water is deeper, and there is a lot more tannic stain to it,'' fishing guide Buck Johnson said. ''The bass seem to be bedding everywhere behind the reeds -- I've been fishing back almost to the banks and catching fish.''

Johnson specializes in fishing with live wild shiners, but a patient worm angler can produce strikes sooner or later.

The best color of plastic worms for East Lake Toho are either chocolate or the so-called ''napalm,'' with its contrasting brown and orange-yellow color pattern.

Dark grape or black worms are the most productive on Lake Eustis in Lake County's Harris Chain.

But if you look for spawning fish on Eustis in the many residential canals, which have been the hottest spawning-time fishing spots in recent years, you'll be making a mistake.

''For some reason, the bass haven't gone to the canals -- they are bedding in heavy grass around the lake,'' Tavares tackle store owner Chad Taylor said.